Peers consider Smith unparalleled

Editor's note: This is the last of four Massey Award winner profiles.

In her 29 years in the Department of Chemistry, Rebecca Smith saw a lot of
changes on campus.

She retired last year after working her way up from secretary to department
manager. Along the way, her peers say she became an indispensable resource for
the department -- one who combined institutional memory with a wide degree of
know-how.

This spring, Smith was awarded the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award
along with three other University employees, all selected by the late
Chancellor Michael Hooker. Each received a $5,000 check and was honored at an
awards banquet in April.

The late C. Knox Massey, a former Durham advertising executive who served 20
years as a University trustee, created the award in 1980. The program is
supported by three generations of the Massey and Weatherspoon families.

Smith's colleagues considered her indispensable.

"Until her retirement...one could find a virtually unanimous opinion in the
Department of Chemistry that it could not function without [Smith]," the award
citation said.

Smith said she never expected to receive that kind of award. She didn't even
know there was a monetary prize.

"I didn't think there was anything but a certificate," she said. "I was very
surprised, very touched and very honored."

Between the time she started as a secretary in 1969 and retired last year, the
chemistry department moved part of its operations into the Kenan labs building,
and the number of students and faculty grew tremendously. Buildings sprouted up
all around Venable Hall, which once served as the main offices for one of the
largest and most complex units in the College of Arts and Sciences.

During her first years at the University, the chemistry department was
constantly plagued by bomb threats that always seemed to occur on exam days.

"I guess there were a lot of people who really just didn't want to take
tests," Smith said.

Later in her career, Smith was working as the department's personnel officer
when the department manager left to take another job during a time of budget
problems and staff shortages. For a stretch, Smith served as personnel officer
and department manager, as well as handled the accounting work for the
department's multi-million-dollar budget.

She also had to grapple with an explosion in technology, with mimeograph
machines and electric typewriters being replaced by Xerox machines and
computers. The department's first Xerox machine was a gargantuan, costly
contraption so intimidating that no graduate students were allowed to touch it,
she said.

She's seen other changes, too. Many chemistry faculty members who worked in
the 1960s and 1970s have retired or passed away.

"It's not the University I miss so much, but really the people," she said.

She's been asked to come back and work as a consultant to help with the
numerous changes still going on in the department. But the lifelong Orange
County resident is too busy now handling the bookkeeping for a local church and
volunteering in the community.

"I need the routine. Plus, after I left [the University], I did miss helping
people," she said.